Is Human Rights Watch really all that NGO?

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is in the news pontificating again. They are like little tiny parkings ticket officers who spin around in their little 3-wheel vehicles, ticketing people in places like the Warsaw Ghetto and Nagasaki for not pumping coins properly into the human rights’ meters they are in charge of monitoring.

How do they do such a good job from their little office in New York City where they telescope the world looking for offenders? Where does their money come from? How even handed they are as they hand out parking violation summaries to both Big and Little. They are like that famous ‘American justice’ which is said to apply the vagrancy laws equally to both rich and poor. If either Hobo Joe or Bill Gates sleeps under the highway overpass, they both equally will be hauled off to jail for violating the law. Similarly, this is the HRW code of ethics.

If you visit their website, HRW will proudly inform you that it accepts no money from any government. Oh Wow! How impressive. They will also inform one that they are the biggest ‘human rights organization’ in the US of A. They have a staff of close to 250, and an operating budget of around $40,000,000. Look further, and you will see that they have ticketed offenders from BanglaDesh to Myanmar to the other side of the moon. And then strangely enough, you will find that there is nothing listed about how Iraq and Afghanistan being invaded by the US government is a human rights violation! A rather big one. I guess they don’t take political sides? lol. I don’t know about you, but I believe in proportionality when it comes to human rights and who violates them. HRW does not. Despite their pretense of going after everybody, the big human right’s offenders, like the US government and the Pentagon, mainly get a free walk.

This supposed neutrality in judgement that they push is like that of the Carter Center. Kind of suspect. If they accept no funds from the US government, then where does their money come from? From people like you and me their website will smilingly proclaim! uh… and from foundations. So who are these foundations? Well that seems to be HRW’s big secret. They just don’t really say. But i’m quite sure they’re ‘liberal’ foundations, though distinctly Americancentric ones. Snicker,snicker…. Democratic Party-minded foundations, shall we say. And last I heard, the Democratic Party was one of the 2 pillars of the US government. So much for the HRW’s claims to be without official US government backing. Let’s jiust say that it is unofficial support, then. From liberal Democrats like you and them.

So how does this supposed neutrality of pointing out supposed human rights violations work? If funding begins to decline because a bad thing or two was said about Israel, then denounce ‘equally’ the Palestinians. And that’s just what HRW is doing. Got to keep the staff employed. Got to get them liberal funds from liberal folk that liberally have supported Israel from inside the US back flowing. Let’s call our ability to talk out of both sides of our mounths, NEUTRALITY. Let’s parade ourselves as independent from the government. And let’s hide who those foundations are that give us the funds. I bet its not the Bradley Foundation, nor from the Walton family? Maybe Soros or Gates? People like you and me. chuckle.

HRW has just gotten through with condemning the way that Palestinans defend themselves from being slaughtered by Israel. See these 2 responses to that.

Would HRW have attacked MLK, too? by Jonathan Cook
and
HRW’s Shameful Press Release by Norman Finkelstein

Gangster Capitalism

When we watch the likes of an Alan Dershowitz or a Donald Rumsfield pontificating on the US government’s supposed need to use torture, even as they in the same breath deny that torture is torture or that they are advocating and using it in US prisons and elsewhere…. well… it is a sign that gangster capitalism now reigns supreme.

Other signs can be seen in countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Afghanistan…all puppet friends of the US government, btw, where mafiosos dump dead mutilated bodies daily into the streets victims of the continual drug turf wars. Well that too is another sign that today gangster capitalism is more the norm, than the exception. Too, we see gangster capitalism at work in the cases of Enron and HealthSouth. And remember the US Savings and Loan bailouts of a previous decade that opened the gates to the mafiosos? Billions hauled away by gangster capitalism’s thieves prowling the streets of our country. Gangster capitalism today has penetrated to the highest levels of our country’s political offices. It is not just a US problem. Go ask a Russian.

But the heart of gangster capitalism is ripping off the environment. It is easiest to rip off the commons, and that’s what nature is, the commons. The Pentagon is the leader in this type of gangster capitalism, as it mines, deploys toxins, explodes ordinance, and confiscates entire states and territories for its use everywhere around the planet. Gangster capitalism’s heart, if it has to be said, is a US military toxic waste dump. But the whole world has become that Pentagon dump now.

Here is a look, titled appropriately enough ‘Gangster Capitalism’, at how today’s capitalism is looting our environment. Check it out at Black Agenda Report.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sucks big time

Citadel Let’s face it. UCCS was designed by second rate people to be a second rate school. A simple visit or two is all that is necessary to come to this conclusion. America is full of these second rate schools and all of them have the same features. These middle schools masquerading as universities all were deliberatey designed not to become another Berkeley, Madison, Boulder, UT at Austin, etc. They were designed to be intellectually barren zones, devoid of life, liberty, and happiness. Just what is the formula for doing this that the architects of The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs followed so faithfully?

Location, location, location! That is the key to successfully designing the second rate, nominally public university. You got to build these places out in the boonies far from intellectual family, friends, and community. You want no liberal cafes, bookstores, video stores, nor public places of any kind to pop up. The ideal, is to enclose the campus building within a fortress of parking lots 40-50 miles out of the way. A place amongst the cows, and far from the people. UCCS didn’t quite meet this ideal, as it is not even that physically far from the center of the city. But just try to walk onto the campus from outside! It’s nigh near impossible!

On one side you have the cliffs, and on the other side you have the busy road. Then you have the wall, the signs that disallow parking, the signs saying it is illegal to cross the busy road on foot. Shoot, I’m surprised they don’t have machine guns pointed out over barbed wire blocking the community’s way to keep normal folk of the city away from the impressionable young minds jailed inside! So as it is, you do risk your life by trying to ambulate onto the grounds of higher education designed by second rate people to be second rate. Oh, and to produce conservative credentialed folk that are usually too stupid to realize that they got robbed of any real education by the time they stumble forth once again.

Maybe you want to commute a vehicle to approach this ivory tower of mediocrity? Some delectable conference ‘open’ to the tax payers of Colorado Springs has perhaps tempted you to breach the gates? Go right ahead inside! Pop out of your car, appraoch the automated university pick pocket, and chunk down your $7.00 parking fee. Oh what a bargain, no wonder people are knocking this place down to use a s a community resourse! Not. What you have instead is so-called university designed as gated community. Gated any way you look.

There are two common incorrect assumptions made about the UCCS. Number one- that it is actually a university. Wrong. A university is engaged in education, while UCCS is not. It is engaged in credentialing. That is, it is engaged in credentialing essentially people that remain uneducated. Number two- UCCS is thought of as being a publicly funded school. Not really. Go to their website and see where the money actually comes from.

Sure, some of it is from public taxpayers’ money, like the parking structures and general architecture of the area, all designed to keep the taxpaying lower classes of the public away and off campus. But the big political money comes from super rich people like Philip Anschutz. He just wrote off his taxes to the tune of $92 million given to control the direction that UCCS goes in. Think this supposedly public university is going to allow any public professor to bad mouth Phil? You can take all that chortle and nonsense about balance and free speech away, can’t you? This is a place paid for by the Mr. Bigs.

So you now see why the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sucks so big time. Big money produces big crap once again in yet another American city. ‘Universities’ everywhere, and all populated by credentialed dunces. Thanks, Philip Anschutz. Thanks big boys. So much money to produce a UCCS! What a waste.

Welcome to the working class

Working Class. What does that mean to you? Bruce Springsteen? Blue Collar? Manual Laborers? It’s easier than that. Those who work for a living. The American Dream has always promised an escape from the tedium of labor. The Bourgeois had long before broken from the laborers, setting themselves apart from those who possessed no property or education. But Bourgeois are still workers. So are white collar workers and professionals. The middle class, the upper middle class and frequenly beyond. Who is not working class? The Leisure Class.

Why make the distinction? Because of the increasing gap between the rich and poor. The haves gather more and the have-nots less. Less money yes, and less leisure. The famed middle class aspirations of education and pursuit of personaly fulfillment will be soon be out of reach. A great bubble of self-delusion keeps the American populace from fully embracing their peers. A belief that a little hard work, or good fortune, entitlement, will elevate them above their station, above the problems of their neighbors and co-workers.

Paris Hilton, heir to what could have been an aimless life of leisure, decided to work. Bill Gates works. As do the Bushes.

I have a pacifism problem

Mahatma Gandhi Ghandi GandiIf a pacifist falls in the forest, does he save anybody? I do not mean in the metaphysical sense.
 
If a hundred thousand pacifists fall, out of sight from anyone to witnesses their deaths, struck down every last one by anti-pacifists, do they increase pacifism or simply deliver their own extinction? What if it’s a half a million in East Timor? Or several million in a Turkish desert? If there are no witnesses to report it, no writers to remember it, no masses to empathize, there is no outrage, no call to common humanity.

Gandhi had the accruing outrage of the British people built on a century of brutal massacres of unarmed Indians. He also benefited from an honorable free press. Both ensured that Gandhi’s non-violent actions could spark an outcry and tip the scales of social justice. The Native Americans had no such good fortune, quietly annihilated far from civilization’s eyes. The Palestinians are not faring any better, interned by the Jews, suffering the steady attrition designed into concentration camps and Indian reservations.

My problem with pacifists such as the Dalai Lama is that their goals lay in another world, the next. Their escape for the Dark Ages would have been to proceed further into darkness. The answer to getting Tibet back from the Chinese lies not in relinquishing it. Pacifism may soothe the soul and calm our anger only that it allows us a serene death. Pacifism resolves the conflicted feelings we have about losing a homestead. It will not win it back.

As the barbarians breach the gates, religious leaders always call for non-violent acquiescence. The purpose may be to die with dignity, or else it’s the hopeful belief that “they can’t kill us all.” But history has shown, from prehistory to the present, they most certainly can. Look up barbarian in the dictionary. Their savagery extends beyond the scope of human beings to imagine it. Had that feeling lately about today’s unspeakable acts? Is it beyond your comprehension that elements of mankind might be immovably barbaric?

Perhaps you are of the mind that if barbarous cockroach man dominates the earth, it will be a world in which you no longer choose to live. But be square in such case about your call to pacifism. Others may not share your abdication of responsibility to this life.

Extreme TB on its way

The news has hardly been noticed the mainstream public, but only about 2 months ago, the panic began to hit the world medical community. About 2% of the world’s 9,000,000 TB patients are now thought to have a new strain of it, totally resistant to all antibiotic treatment. The name for this condition is Extreme TB, as opposed to the more prevalent form of multi-drug resistant TB. Tuberculosis has been evolving into a form resistant to all present treatments, and as such, it joins with treatment resistant forms of strep and staph that themselves are newly plaguing patients worldwide. Plus, of course, there is the constant danger of a new rampaging flu epidemic to come sometime soon in the future.

While flu is a virus that mutates (evolves) over time,the microbial evolution of bacteria into forms resistant to antibiotics was not foreseen until just fairly recently. Now, the medical world is in total panic because there have been no technological magic bullets to come along that would help in stopping the spread of infectious disease across the planet once again. What we have now, is a microbial breakdown in the world’s ecologic balance. And like with the other ecological breakdowns, capitalism has been fueling the crisis by enmeshing much of the world in unsanitary poverty.

How serious is this situation? Well ask Bill Gates and George Soros. Both have been pumping millions of their own dollars into African TB prevention programs trying to put their little fingers into the holes in the dikes of our failing world capitalist medical system. Unlike some of the more dull witted super rich, these 2 men realize that drug resistant TB could ultimately kill off even rich folk like themslves, and not just poor Black HIV patients in South Africa. For a recent commentary about the evolution of this new and spreading pandemic, see this Guardian article

America’s Pirates

No, this is not about ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, but about Microsoft and WalMart instead. Every year Forbes Magazine does its glowing presentation about the super-rich who rule us that really should be better called ‘Pirates of The United States of America’. Replace Johnny Depp with Bill Gates, perhaps, and have a great flick! Actually, a lot of liberal Democratic Party romantics already really seem to find him sexy, and if they flutter over Al Gore’s movie then certainly Bill Gates as pirate would be a blockbuster for them, if made into film. And YES go figure about some liberals’ personal taste? Throw in Hillary with Bill for yet more romance amongst the pirate super-rich. And the Democratic Party faithful will swoon.

So the gist of Forbes summary this year is that the top 400 people with big bucks gained another $120 billion over the last year. Yes, all through hard work. That gives these worthy pirates a total value of 1 and 1/4 triillion dollars. It broke my slide rule just calculating all that dough. Where did it come from, Folks? So hard to guess, ain’t it?

Hint, hint, hint, for the really thick. It came from theft. You got your pocket picked and still don’t know it! What could you do with an extra 1 and 1/4 trillion dollars those top 400 US pirates grabbed overall? And shoot, that’s not even talking about any Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, or dark seedy Arab pirates! How many pirates do you think the world’s poor can support? The Mexican poor support quite a few all alone, including ones’ called Hank, and another called Slim! And no doubt, America will turn out yet more next year.

Attention, All Pirates. Neiman Marcus’s Christmas catalog will be out soon! I hear there is even a yacht made out of solid diamonds for sale. How can it float, but it’s quite a sight to see? I love that catalog!

Justice delayed, denied, for now

Not to worry, not to worry. The Bush and GOP plan to indemnify themselves from responsibility for their war crimes will be to scant avail. Let them pass whatever bill they want.

It’s true, justice delayed is justice denied. And it is depressingly ungratifying to see criminals legislate themselves legitimacy. But the representatives at the United Nations have settled for this delay before.

Not long ago our nation was at war with the people of Vietnam. Our imperialist interventions eventually turned toward the people of Cambodia and Laos in illegal acts of aggression. There was absolutely no other nation powerful enough to bring us to account, and because of our veto power on the Security Council, any number of Nations United could not condemn us or stop us.

The U.N. delegates settled for delayed justice. They said, in effect, we may not stop you now, but that doesn’t make what you are doing right or legal. They agreed that there would be no statute of limitations for breaches of international law, neither should any nation be able to exclude itself from the law’s jurisdiction.

In 1968 the U.N. General Assembly made explicit the universal jurisdiction of the war crimes conventions. The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity ensured that nobody could consider themselves beyond the reach of international rule of law.

Article 1, part (b) defines the universal illegality of war crimes, “even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”

Article 4 reads that no nation’s laws can redefine what are understood to be war crimes, that “statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in articles 1 and 2 of this Convention and that, where they exist, such limitations shall be abolished.”

The torturers and warmongers can delay their appointment with the hangman, but the scurryng around to jerrymander the law is a good sign. Bush and co are showing the discomfort of knowing that justice awaits.

Chain emails and Saint George

About this time each year for some reason, a certain friend of mine gets into a panic and passes on chain emails in renewed hope that she will come into money. Last year she sent everyone the It-Really-Works-Bill-Gates-Will-Pay-You-$275K email. A day later she apologized.

Does she recognize what all these chain emails are really about? Chain letters and Ponzi schemes in the cyber world take on an entirely different purpose than they used to have through snail-mail. And they succeed wildly. Chain emails circulate for large computers to map contact patterns and networks.

When you forward a chain email, its authors track whom you sent it to and how quickly. That’s why the email is launched in the first place, to chart enormous networks of who is in touch with whom. At the most superficial level, the process determines which email addresses are valid. To information traders the emails reveal social connections and hierarchies.

We’re not just talking about the pyramid schemes, we’re also talking about all those clever emails you get in the morning that apparently made one of your relatives smile. Where did you think those come from? Did you think some cherub with time on his hands, sitting at his kitchen window in Hawaii, composed a funny story addressing impish Americanisms which through myriad cyber degrees of separation found itself in your aunt’s incoming email? You’d be right. Except about the cherub’s clients who are watching the logs as their whimsical package bounces along.

Especially if the message involves embedded graphics. Server-side graphic files telegraph the whereabouts of an email in real time. Often graphic files are disguised as text. (MSN and Hotmail track all their email using embedded graphics that pretend to be text. Given that linked files require many times more computation power than does text, disguising the files AS TEXT would seem to concede that Microsoft knows we would not appreciate what they are doing.)

Don’t you wonder why at the end of each and every one of those clever emails, the funny sentiment is always followed by urgent instruction to send it on?

Do these authors think that they are just SO funny, you MUST pass their work on to everyone you know? Do you see this at the end of newspaper columns or comic strips? Do book authors end their novels by recommending that you tell all your friends to buy a copy or face three years of bad luck?

If an email asks to be sent on, and you want to, and must, here’s how to do it without contributing to the fortunes of direct marketers and spammers. Copy and paste just the text into a fresh email, then send it on. If there is a graphic, save it to disk and then attach it.

2.
Or put it on the web. Here’s an email forwarded to me from my good friend Paulette. 🙂 It’s an old joke, presented this go-round as Saint George.

Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

By Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 3

Tennis courts in the shadow of golf balls
Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 2

N-8 silo revisited
Day 1: Monday
On Monday we stood, nearly two dozen of us at the corner of Lake and Lake Circle, we sang our song to an Oscar Meyer melody, we held banners, we blew our whistles and we handed out our baloney sanwiches. And nearly got arrested.

The Broadmoor had cordoned off the majority of the sidewalk in front of their new Convention Center. Our protest was relegated to only the corner. True, it was a very visible corner, and we could offer flyers to nearly everyone walking to the Convention Center from the Broadmoor Hotel. But we thought we could accomplish a little more if we paraded our banners more visibly.

Dave Therault noted that all the Harris security personel were bunched up around us. Dave proposed a plan to excercise their legs a little. He suggested that he and I parade a banner along Lake Circle, walking in the marked bike lane adjacent to where the Broadmoor had blocked off our pedestrian sidewalk. Our banner would then be seen by the attendees inside the center, not just those milling about the entrance. Our banner read STAR WARS RESEARCH: A WELFARE SYSTEM FOR TECHNOLOGY.

Sure enough, as soon as we began we heard the security radios squalk. “Stop them” was the gist of the messages. A nearby guard told us to stop but we looked at him and asked why, while still moving forward. He responded with a smile. Each time we passed somebody with a radio, we could hear the supervisor ask why they were not containing us.

When we returned from our first pass, we added another person to our parade and another banner. It was a Henry Ford quote: TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF WAR & WE’LL HAVE PEACE TOMORROW. This time more security officers joined us. When we returned we noted that they were now quite spread out.

On our third pass, the head of security came down himself. He approached us from the street, simply to tell us, in no uncertain terms and not calmly or with civility, to get back to where they were permitting us to stand. We answered that we didn’t work for him, actually and would proceed how we pleased. He repeated his command and threatened to call the cops and have us taken away. Certainly everything accelerated from there.

Suddenly we were surrounded by a half dozen policemen. They listened and interjected in calm terms that we were on Broadmoor property and had to do what the man said. We argued public thoroughfare, pedestrian right-of-way, to no avail. Dave diffused the confrontation, I assumed my role as hothead.

I wonder, I know why we are so vociferous in our condemnation of the military complex. What is it that drives their enthousiasm to stop us? We’re holding banners. They are killing babies, ruining lives and subjugating unsuspecting masses. We’re holding banners. Who should be the more indignant?

2.
On the way out, walking into the Broadmoor neighborhood to retrieve one of our cars, I encountered a soldier walking the other way. He’d just parked his car perhaps and we crossed paths on this tree lined street. He wore a full dress uniform, lots of medals and a beret, and he carried himself with informal dignity. I was wearing a bright green t-shirt enblazoned with a large peace sign and my Camp Casey cap. I was carrying several rolled banners over my shoulder and walked like I was returning from the front line.

The soldier and I nodded to each other and smiled. I couldn’t help but feel we had communicated a solidarity. He has been doing his job, I have been doing mine, both on the periphery of those making the decisions. The war mongers aren’t the soldiers. The war mongers are the guys in suits, sporting golf tans. Our common adversaries. And boy are there a lot of them. Three more symposium days to go.

Day 2: Tuesday
In conjunction with the Space Symposium protest at the Broadmoor, CITIZENS FOR PEACE IN SPACE held a screening on Monday night in the WES room at Colorado College. We watched the new documentary CONVICTION, about the three Dominican sisters who served almost four years in Federal Prison for protesting at a Minuteman missile silo in 2002. It had screened the day before in Denver to an audience of 350. The director and producer were on hand to answer questions, as were sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie. On Tueday night CONVICTION was scheduled to screen again in Greeley, so CPIS decided to make a day trip out of the event and provide an entourage for the sisters.

On the way of course Bill scheduled protest actions at Lockeed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Buckley AFB and Minuteman silo N-8, the site of the sisters’ 2002 Plowshare action.

Noteworthy perhaps was the degree to which preparations were made in advance of our arrival. Even Aurora Community College, where we planned to park and disperse ourselves to three of the defense contractors in Aurora, was ready for us. Bill had mentioned receiving several telephone inquiries from the various police departments, they had been checking CSAction for details of our plans. When we arrived at each location, we found barriers had been installed at the entrance of every parking lot with a minimum of a half dozen security personel standing about. I cannot say they were there to greet us, because they were not. They stood off to the side, or backed up when we approached. They were keeping a healthy no-man zone between us. At Raytheon there were even people posted on the roof to watch us.

At Buckley Airforce Base we were read a letter of greeting from the security officer that sounded like our Miranda rights, although it was full of cautionary advisories should we consider trying to force our way past the security booth. Our only intentions had been to conduct a rally and listen to what several experts could tell us about the activities conducted at Buckley, particularly having to do with those huge golf balls. I wondered if the security detail which contained us had sufficient clearance to be hearing such information.

Here is perhaps why protesters have to expect NSA surveillance. Because we learn too damn much. If the military doesn’t trust its own officers with classified information, they certainly don’t trust us to keep it secret. And we’re willing to let anyone overhear us, maybe that could be a genuine national security risk. In this case, we spoke about NSA/Defense Department complicity in the presence of Buckley AFB part-time security guard contractors.

The highlight of the day was of course Minuteman silo N-8, where the sisters held a press conference to reporters from Denver and Greeley. It was an emotional event and hard to describe. Many of us had never stood so near to a weapon of mass destruction. In this case, mass-mass-destruction, many-many times more powerful than the bombs unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This missile carries payloads for thirty separate destinations. In light of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Minuteman missile’s purpose is obsolete. Strategically it can now serve only an offensive purpose. Technically its existence violates the non-proliferation treaties to which our nation is signatory. N-8 presents a very, very grave danger to humankind’s survival. It is not a toy.

We drove Northeast from Greely to reach N-8. We probably could have found a nearer missile if we wanted. There are 49 missile sites in Colorado, out of 500 sites nation-wide.

While we conducted our action, wrapping the gate with CRIME SCENE tape, marking the site with a poster designating it as a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and an EVICTION NOTICE, a black helicopter circled. Apparently within just minutes of our leaving, several matte black SUVs arrived and removed our decorations.

Tennis courts in the shadow of golf balls
Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission

PPJPCYesterday I attended the annual members meeting of the Justice and Peace Commission and felt like there was an inertia of inactivity, or let’s say activity of lesser consequence, which was not to be overcome. As if perhaps the PPJPC were not going to let this war disrupt their good efforts toward promoting sustainable living, fair trade and mass transportation.

The overriding issue this year? Finding a permanent home for PPJPC, instead of renting. That is a very nice goal, but it is my belief that circumstances have not dealt that hand. Our times have been dealt the specter of fascism in the form of undeniable crimes against humanity and the exacerbation of some very cruel domestic policies. Barbarians inside the gates so to speak. Now is not a time for starting a knitting club. At least not for the PEACE AND JUSTICE club!

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. I honor each of PPJPC’s goals, but I have to point to the limited resources. PPJPC has only so much money, so many members and so much energy. To put it another way, we have so many members, and so much energy, let’s direct everybody toward where we can make the most difference!

While I’m being an alarmist, why not look at global warming, which some experts are saying we can no longer reverse, and bird flu, which is spreading faster than you can Google for updates. I certainly do not have any remedies other than what seems to be obvious. Now is not the time to have a moron in charge of our country, particularly such a spectacularly ungifted dauphin whose regents are only motivated to protect and enrich themselves. That’s where we have to start.

2.
Another great concern I have about the direction of the PPJPC is its focus on propagating non-violent communication. This is the quite honorable idea that consensus can always be achieved through non-confrontational discussion.

If teaching non-violent communication should indeed be PPJPC’s mission, then the results become largely internal. Wouldn’t the membership of PPJPC have to increase by hundreds or thousands every month to justify such a meek objective? It can’t be enough to take donations from people who would like to see reform in our prisons for example, only to camp outside the prison walls and teach each other proper prison code of conduct.

To my mind, the pacifism which PPJPC is trying to teach, looks more like passive-ism. If the PPJPC board members want to be Buddhists, to accept whatever comes, to rise above earthly conflict, that is fine. But I would think it is hardly what its members are expecting the PPJPC to do. We can each of us choose the path of passivism, of acceptance, of transcendence, without need of a Pikes Peace Justice and Peace Commission.

The white Olympics

Smokestacks of TurinToday I watched the opening ceremonies of the White Olympics in Torino.
 
Yes, White Olympics. Virtually all the athletes are white. White because winter sports take place in northern climes where most everybody is white. White because winter sports require equipment beyond what tropical non-developed countries can afford their athletes. White because that is the color of the world aristocracy.

But the Summer Olympics were very much the same. Compared to World Soccer, or the NBA, or the NFL, or the AFL-CIO, the Summer Olympics are lily-white.

So everyone at the Winter Olympics is white, the entire South African team is white. The few dark faces among the white are citizens of white countries who trace their roots elsewhere.

When the American team made its entrance, I wondered, where were the boos? The American athletes were smiling and waving, many were hamming for the camera, one was talking on her phone. An audience was never shown, either booing or applauding.

But there would not have been booing at this pageant. This was a fete for the developed countries, presently at war with darker skinned countries. This was a white man’s club. The few delegates from dark countries were vestiges of the old colonial representatives, cousins of the western nations, returned home having lost their lands and authority to land-reform and indigenous efforts to reclaim territorial autonomy.

So this celebration was the bi-annual gathering of the ruling class, their athletes who can afford to practice their athletics full time, and the spectators who can jet around the world and attend the events.

And the symbol of power from which the ruling classes owe their supremacy was visible in the Olympic flame. Some might also find it was appropriate for the industrial city of Torino.
 
I thought it looked right out of Antonioni’s stark 1964 film Red Desert about industrial ennui, the multiple-funneled smokestack that is this year’s Olympic cauldron.

Koran flushing

Sacreligious treatment of the Koran. Not THE Koran, nor A Koran, but someone’s OWN Koran. A bible-thumper might appreciate this distinction more than the average near-secular American.

Guantanamo interrogators weren’t flushing a Gideon Bible down the toilet, some vinyl-covered copy glimpsed only briefly in a hotel room drawer, nor even a Family Bible, a nicer copy kept on a lower shelf in the family den.

The Holy books destroyed at US facilities are PERSONAL COPIES, given to individuals at Confirmation or First Communion, carried around to daily or weekly meetings, with inscriptions from relatives and teachers and loved ones, with personal inscriptions, study points in the margins, journal entries, or family records.

These are what the US wardens were abusing before the tears of their owners. The political prisoners where often brought with not even the clothes on their backs, but they were allowed their Korans. Perhaps because our Afgan surrogates, the Moslems doing our bidding, would not conceive of depriving the captives of their Korans.

These are the Korans we are desecrating.